''Just to Get a Rep'' is a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Peter Gerard Peter Gerard (born in Columbia, Missouri, United States) is a film director, film producer and film distributor. Gerard founded Accidental Media and Distrify, and is currently employed at Vimeo. Filmmaking Gerard's best known film is ''Just to ...

. It premiered at the

Edinburgh International Film Festival The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) is a film festival that runs for two weeks in June each year. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films (all ti ...

in 2004 and played over a dozen international film festivals. The film covers the history of

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

art and its relationship with hip-hop, from 1970s

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to the international graffiti culture in the early 2000s.

Synopsis

The film is about the origins of graffiti and hip-hop as told by some of New York's graffiti pioneers as well as contemporary artists from Europe and the US. Graffiti art as we know it today started in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

and became a worldwide culture when the media and art world featured graffiti and its artists in newspapers, books and movies. ''Just to Get a Rep'' examines how these influences affected the culture and married it with

rap Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

breakdancing Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in ...

and

DJing A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio Music radio is a radio format in which music is the main broadcast con ...

under the term " hip-hop" coined by

Afrika Bambaataa Lance Taylor (born on April 17, 1957), also known as Afrika Bambaataa (), is an American DJ, rapper, and producer from the South Bronx, New York. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenc ...

Release

''Just to Get a Rep'' was premiered at the

in 2004 and played international festivals for more than two years. ''Just to Get a Rep'' was

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

in France in 2007. ''Just to Get a Rep'' was released via

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

in September 2009 from the film's website with "pay-what-you-feel" pricing and also through VODO. A DVD was released in 2010 and the film became the first available for direct-to-fan purchase on Distrify in 2011.

References

External links

* * {{Official website, http://www.justtogetarep.com/ 2004 films 2004 documentary films 2000s English-language films